"That does not answer my question!"

"Oh. In a broader sense, my business here is that your civilization is collapsing and I would like to see if any of it is salvageable and compatible with people other than your species continuing to be alive, and do my best to help salvageable parts survive."

"In that case, go away, we have everything under control."

"I also want you to stop murdering people, which you seemed to be doing when I looked."

"What?"

Cam pulls up some of the video he took of the ritual sacrifice. "Ring a bell?" he asks, displaying it.

"Oh, the sacrifices. Those are necessary. They'll all be over with in a few hours."

"Why are they necessary?"

"Because that is what the prophecies dictate."

Can Cam find these prophecies in his corpus of information?

He cannot.

"And what are the prophecies?"

"Not your business."

"Then I see no reason not to interfere with with carrying them out," says Cam.

"Ugh," says the Important Cultist. "Why?"

"Because a lot of people have died today, entirely too many, and while if you absolutely have to kill people your choice of targets is not bad, I doubt very much that you absolutely have to kill people."

"...Are you or are you not the same entity who brought about the collapse of our civilization in the first place?"

"Yes," sighs Cam. "Yes, I am. Your civilization was rigged to explode as soon as it met someone it couldn't kill, and it can't kill me."

"Well," says the cultist, "if you want to promote a new order that isn't interested in exterminating filth creatures, go away and leave us alone. If you want to destroy us too, I suppose I can't stop you."

"I don't want to destroy you but under the circumstances I can't trust you, so leaving you alone will have to wait until I know more about what you're up to."

"What do you propose to do, then?"

"I want to learn more about what you want to do, if it's not 'destroy filth creatures'. And I would like you to stop killing people. Maybe they're all so obsessed with purity that they'll kill themselves, but if you help them that seems like it risks bycatch of some who do not in fact want to die."

"Many who demonstrated the ability to function in the new system were spared," says the cultist. "If you will not accept reasoning on theological grounds, consider the practical. Who's to say that if the purity-keepers were all spared, they would not conspire to arrange a counter-revolution?"

"So you don't think you can hold order under conditions where organized dissent exists?"

"Perhaps you can't tell, but we are holding order!"